Category: Gen AI

On the potential of the Internet, Anthony Rutkowski, “a de facto global spokesman for all things cyberspace,” told the Washington Post in February 1996, “These technologies are going to profoundly affect the way we perceive our humanity. We all have ideas to share and stories to tell and now we really can.”

There were also pessimists like Sidney Perkowitz who wrote In the May/June 1996 issue of The American Prospect, “Aimless chat is the insidious seduction of the Internet; it can replace inward contemplation and real experience.”

Now in 2023, AI is currently in a similar phase. From being a sci-fi fantasy it has evolved and fast, to a real-world super utility. While there are those who still look at AI and Machine Learning technologies as something to be wary of. Underneath all the chatter though, there is the hope of a better future.

#1 Disruption of Artificial Intelligence in Retail

Over the past four years, the application of AI has increased by up to 270% across many sectors. Additionally, it was expected that the use of AI across various business operations may help retailers save over $340 billion by 2022, and it did.

This in itself is a testament to the great future of AI in the retail industry. Companies like Amazon are testing AI amalgamated with drones for delivery in less than 30 minutes. The future of AI in retail is bound to be more autonomous and individualized which will further provide more choices to consumers.

#2 Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

AI will be crucial in preventing close to 86% of errors in the healthcare sector. AI coupled with predictive analytics can be used to better understand how numerous circumstances such as place of birth; dietary habits, etc. affect health. Future healthcare systems will likely use AI to predict when a person is most likely to acquire a chronic illness and recommend preventative medication to treat it before it worsens.

However, if we take a different perspective, the “QR-based Health code” example in China and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have also raised the issue of who is in charge of the system—the user or the machine.

#3 Artificial Intelligence & Job Opportunities

Since the advent of AI, it has been a common fear that AI will leave people jobless. But that’s not the whole truth. We may envision a more comfortable future for ourselves in which new occupations will be created rather than eliminated by artificial intelligence.

While it is true that AI will eliminate repetitious jobs, it is also true that AI will create twice as many jobs as it eliminates. This is evidence of the claim made in a recent report by the World Economic Forum that AI will generate 58 million new employments by 2022. In fact, India’s AI workforce has increased by almost three times since last year, which is encouraging given the country’s promising future.

To Conclude:

AI is undoubtedly here to stay and penetrate further. Fei-Fei Li, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University had this to say, “I imagine a world in which AI is going to make us work more productively, live longer, and have cleaner energy.”
Check out www.oriserve.com to know what we are doing in the world of conversational AI.

Conversational commerce has the potential to accelerate the growth of your brand while improving customer experience. It is critical to understand the capabilities and avoid some of the mistakes while deploying Gen-AI Agents.

Mistake #1: Beginning Without an Effective Plan & Strategy

AI Agents are as good as the information it has regarding your brand, customers, and your product or service. While the AI is quick to learn and adapt as it starts conversing with customers, it is advisable to carefully plan the nuances.

The purpose of developing a conversational AI project influences the plan for creating an effective conversational AI solution.

Develop a plan by examining your customers’ motivations and then modifying the tone, technique, and AI behavior.

Mistake #2: Your First Use-Case

Conversational AI has been deployed largely for rule-based linear customer support. No secret that the experience can be a little frustrating at times interacting with such bots. Real conversational AI understands intent, dialects, sentiments, and multiple requests in the same sentence.

Deploy real conversational AI solutions for your top and middle of the funnel, to begin with. This will allow the AI to learn as it pushes the customer down the sales funnel with intelligent contextual conversations. Treat your AI like a Sales agent who will mature to delight your customers.

Mistake #3: No Hybrid (AI+Human) Approach

We are still in the early days of conversational AI-based end-to-end effective customer transition. According to American Express, 23% of consumers still prefer human interaction in complex issues.

Deploying an AI Agent that is capable of handing over the chat or a call to a live agent with context-rich and structured conversational data can be the most effective approach.

A hybrid solution will bring efficacy, profits, and a better experience.

Mistake #4: Continuous Training & Tracking AI’s Performance

A real conversational AI has the ability to continuously self-learn from available sources and conversations. That still does not mean the AI requires no human intelligence to optimize its paths toward the objective.

Appointing a SPOC for the AI, who can guide the AI in learning responses or understanding context will create a profitable and rewarding experience. Tracking key metrics of your conversational AI can help dramatically improve its performance.

Mistake #5: Ignoring the Trends & Predictions

Newer technology stacks and methods are being added to conversational AI daily. Gen-AI Agents are becoming intelligent and capable as we interact more and more with it. That means it becomes imperative to keep an eye out for early trends.

This will help you design the best-updated conversational AI solution that suits your business needs and helps you outperform your KPIs.

Check out the list of the top 5 trends we recently published for conversational AI adoption for 2025.

If you’re a brand or an enterprise looking to take advantage of AI Agents, consider these 5 points and move ahead and upwards. Click here to schedule a demo with our experts, if you’re stuck adopting Gen-AI Agents into your operational or customer-focused processes today.

The evolution of conversational AI and messaging channels has revolutionized the way brands communicate with their customers. Meta’s family of apps, i.e., Messenger, WhatsApp & Instagram, provide a massive opportunity for brands to create meaningful conversations with their customers. This has led to messaging channels becoming an integral part of every brand’s digital transformation strategy.

Over one billion people use Instagram regularly. 83% of users discover new products and services through the app, and almost half of them follow through with their purchases. It’s time for brands to create and establish their presence on the platform and shape their unique brand identity. 

Messaging is an integral part of Instagram; it helps customers connect with brands through multiple avenues like feeds, stories, mentions, and DMs. The goal is to turn Instagram into a vital customer service and commerce channel for businesses of all sizes. With the introduction of the Instagram Messenger API for business, brands can manage customer communications at scale more quickly. 

Messenger API is a game-changer for brands to drive more conversations, consideration, and brand preference. Consumers expect businesses to respond to their messages instantly and satisfactorily. Instagram chatbots can help businesses achieve precisely that and more.

Businesses should explore the Instagram chatbot builder to automate communications and boost sales on Instagram.

What is an Instagram Chatbot & Why do You Need One?

A chatbot doubles up as a virtual consultant that sends automated responses based on triggers such as specific keyword searches or actions. Chatbots can also send bulk messages and collect customer information, which is stored in an integrated CRM system.

Instagram chatbots can be beneficial to businesses in the following ways – 

• Boost customer loyalty by providing instant answers to their queries 24/7
• Achieve an increase in sales through instant, relevant and persistent communication.
• Improve customer retention by sending relevant and helpful reminders and announcements.
• Save internal resources since businesses will not require many agents to process orders and reply to repetitive incoming messages.

How do Chatbots Help Automate Business Processes?

Let’s first talk about the basic functions that brands can assign to chatbots on Instagram:

1. Answering FAQ:

Business accounts often receive direct messages containing similar questions about product availability, prices, sizes, locations, working hours, delivery times, etc. Brands can program the bot to provide options and react to specific trigger words in users’ messages, preventing the customer support executives from being overwhelmed.

2. Automating the initial stages of the sales funnel:

Brands can quickly weed out unqualified leads based on their interactions with chatbots. An Instagram bot can replace an actual salesperson and close the deal if the sales funnel is small. However, a live sales team is still needed to process an order — if that’s the case, the brand can add a switch button to allow the users to connect with human sales executives.

Nevertheless, chatbots significantly help business owners save time and money by allowing their employees to provide excellent service and avoid being overwhelmed. After connecting a chatbot, the amount of work that usually takes three people can be processed by one. The bot empowered by conversational intelligence automatically processes appointment requests, reservations, and other inquiries.

3. Increasing customer trust and engagement:

Instagram bots can engage with an audience and warm them up. For instance, brands can design a quiz where users answer questions to receive a desirable lead magnet at the end. Getting something valuable for free will influence the audience’s perception of the brand, boost their interest, and increase their desire to try its paid products.

Businesses can also use chatbots to provide helpful information, educate users about their brand, and share links to other resources.

4. First-party customer data and hyper-personalized offers:

Instead of scouring through a customer’s order history each time the brand wants to contact them, they can set up filters and send personalized automated messages based on their interests, status, and other details.

A lot of conversational insights, customer preferences, and first-party data can be collected through conversations. This helps brands understand their users better and connect with them with content and offers that are tailor-made for them.

5. Sending reminders:

Potential customers can be forgetful regarding meetings, calls, or webinars. Businesses can send gentle reminders on Instagram through a chatbot to ensure customers won’t miss key engagement and brand events. This is backed up by the fact that people spend a lot of time on social media apps and check them outside their working hours, so the chances of noticing a reminder on Instagram are high.

6.  Collecting feedback:

Brands can use Instagram chatbots to conduct surveys and collect feedback. Enabling post-sales conversations, delivery updates and post-sale feedback helps build a connection with the customer.

This also helps brands improve their processes and customer support through collecting timely feedback.

7. Responding to brand mentions in Stories:

Instagram Stories are short-lived. Businesses need to be agile and react instantaneously when they get mentioned by their customers.

Businesses shouldn’t ignore or leave mentions unanswered. Monitoring brand mentions manually is a monotonous task that can be easily automated.

The focus should be not only on thanking customers with words, but also responding smartly and intuitively. Brands can go a step further by offering special customized discounts or other incentives to encourage new purchases and mentions.

8. Using Instagram as an all-in-one communication channel:

Brands can add the “API Request” element to the message flow to extract data from another website or database and display it in a message to a subscriber. 

For example, they contact the brand to learn more about a specific product, and the chatbot uses the name or inventory number of a product to retrieve the necessary information.

9. Click to purchase. From Advertisement to Cart:

It can often be a tedious task for any customer to browse through various products on a company website. Instagram’s conversational commerce will assist customers in finding the products they want.

For instance, a customer finds a dress ad on her Instagram feed and clicks on the “send message” button to inquire whether the dress is available in size “M”. The bot immediately responds to the query and directly sends a payment link to help the customer complete the purchase without having to leave the app.

In addition to this, the bot can send discount coupons and offers that can incentivize the customer to purchase more than they originally intended.

10. Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates:

Due to cart abandonment, e-commerce brands lose $18 billion in revenue each year. The use of an AI-powered Instagram chatbot reduces the possibility of cart abandonment since it engages with the customer, understands what they want, and retrieves relevant products that they will be interested in.

Additionally, timely and smart nudges can get the user to take action.

11. Build Customer Loyalty:

A great way to differentiate brands is to create unique brand experiences. Creating a memorable customer experience leaves a lasting impression and creates loyalty for the brand. Conversational bots can send to specifically targeted customers. For example, brands can send discount coupons to customers who have spent a certain amount at the store.

12. Increase Conversions:

Automation has transformed how brands engage with customers. The buyer’s journey can now be a two-way conversation so that brands can increase conversions. Conversational intelligence on Instagram can be an excellent way to provide real-time conversations that help customers with their purchases. For instance, if a customer has a query about a product, they can DM the company’s Instagram handle and get a response almost immediately. By solving the customer’s question, the customer can proceed with their purchase.

Impactful Ways to Use an Instagram Chatbot

Instagram has over a billion users worldwide. Initially, Instagram was expected to reach a billion users in 2024, but it hit the mark three years early.

Instagram has 2.5 crore business accounts out of 100 crore users, and approximately 20 crore people view a business page every day. Instagram’s rapid growth has altered how consumers interact with brands. Today, it is a standard practice for businesses to be active on Instagram, providing customer service and sharing content. It presents both possibilities and problems.

Brands must allocate resources to develop a dominant Instagram presence. To make the most of these resources, brands must take advantage of the channel’s interactive and fast-paced nature. 

We will now explore how an Instagram chatbot can help brands become more resource-efficient while maximizing their account’s value:

1. Providing customer service that competitors will envy:

In recent years, Instagram has become a predominant customer service platform. Managing this channel can be highly resource-intensive, often requiring a range of dedicated resources. Chatbots alleviate the pressure customer service departments face, acting as the first line of defense.

Additionally, 71% of all Instagram users are under 35 years old. Since this generation is used to dealing with chatbots, conversational AI is an excellent customer support tool for Instagram.

1. Responding to repetitive inquiries:

Dealing with FAQs and repetitive inquiries is a chatbot’s bread and butter. Instagram chatbots can be trained on niche subjects, allowing them to answer a variety of complex FAQs.

A brand needs to create its FAQs and program the chatbot. The chatbot will eventually begin to recognize various query variations and spelling errors by using AI and machine learning. It may be a little daunting for some people. In reality, it’s as simple as creating a spreadsheet with a list of questions and answers.

2. Guiding customers through processes:

Every brand has processes they need to guide customers through. These could be checking order status, resetting a password, or explaining how to complete a premium subscription form. 

Agents are at their best when helping customers with complex or emotional issues. Machines perform best while completing repetitive processes.

An Instagram chatbot can help take care of the long-winded, repetitive processes, while human agents can focus on those customers whose queries cannot be resolved by the chatbot.

Using a chatbot’s conversational intelligence can replicate the company’s human processes, making it easy to turn every step into a chatbot conversation.

Many customer service departments have guides or help sheets to train new agents on their standard processes. An Instagram chatbot replicates those help sheets talking to customers and assisting them directly. 

2. Building a memorable and exciting brand:

Chatbots are more than a simple sales or service tool for the innovative. They are a platform that may be used to portray a company as eccentric, represent a brand’s core ideas, or create trust by offering advice and support. With chatbots driven by conversational AI, there’s endless room for creativity. A single chatbot may significantly increase a business’s reach and recognition, while also working to boost brand recall. This boosts the overall success of the campaign, and the added element of user engagement helps businesses stand out from competitors.

3. Sales, sales, and more sales:

With 80% of Instagram users using Instagram to decide if it’s worth purchasing a product, brands must make the most of this potentially lucrative channel.

Chatbots provide what influencers cannot, interactive engagement. They provide answers to inquiries, put people at ease, and build enthusiasm. In short, chatbots are personal shoppers for every follower.

1. Turn Instagram stories into a stable revenue source:

Instagram stories may be used to encourage direct interaction. A brand can direct message its followers using a specific term. When a follower writes this term, it will initiate a focused discussion.

This enables brands to bring their social campaigns to life and follow-up campaigns with targeted conversations. These discussions can range from delivering discount coupons to complicated, multi-branch dialogues marketing a broad range of products.

There are several strategies to enhance revenue using chatbots and Instagram stories. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Encouraging followers to engage with flash sales.
• Create unique conversations that build interest around a product launch.
• Giving an interactive touch to a marketing effort, assisting customers to move towards conversion with the brand

2. Automate social selling:

Modern customer, especially the younger generation, seeks simple purchase options. As they’re often on a mobile device, consumers don’t want to be bounced from a webpage to buy a product. When brands consider that Instagram users acknowledging the brand page make them more likely to complete impulse purchases, ensuring a seamless experience is paramount. This is where chatbots come in. Chatbots provide information about the product, recommend alternatives, and answer any customers’ questions. Following the deployment of an Instagram chatbot, a creative team may deliver a campaign that draws the eye through stories before concluding the sale through a tailored discussion.

4. Bring in leads that actually care:

The warmer the lead, the easier the sale. Chatbots warm up potential buyers by eliminating communication barriers using AI-based interactions. Before passing leads to the sales team, it’s easy to create a chatbot that:

• Pre-qualifies the lead to ensure it is worth the attention of a salesperson.
• Answers any preliminary inquiries that the customer may have, stoking their hunger and dispelling any concerns.
• Shares promotional content, thereby educating leads about a brand’s products and services.

5. Bring your ads to life:

The problem with the previous practice of following up adverts with static mediums is that the consumer might easily become disinterested. They may become preoccupied, be unable to locate the necessary knowledge, or just forget.

More forward-thinking firms are supplementing their social advertising with chatbots. After clicking on an ad, the user is taken to a chatbot conversation.

The chatbot answers any questions the user may have. It also helps make the experience more engaging, increasing the likelihood the user will buy the company products. 

6. The New Cash Register: Instagram

With the growth of mobile technologies, consumer expectations are changing. On Instagram, conversational intelligence has paved the road for more direct sales pathways. Brands have begun conversing with customers to pique their attention and encourage them to take action. As more people purchase using messaging apps, marketers can leverage conversations to guide users through the buying process, allowing them to shop anywhere and at any time.

Potential Use Cases of Instagram Chatbots

Let’s take a glance at some possible use cases for Instagram message automation now that we’ve covered the basics.

1. A retail/e-commerce brand allowing Instagram users to check the latest products, recover abandoned carts via notifications or let users check the delivery status.
2. An insurance company allows users to book a call with a sales expert.
3. A marketing influencer runs a ‘Comment to win’ discount campaign on their new course.
4. An apparel brand offers coupons by Direct Message to users who mention the brand in stories and leave positive feedback.
5. An electronics company is handling customer complaints with conversational AI chatbots.

Instagram Chatbots: An Opportunity for the Creatives

Instagram rewards creative efforts. Its fast-paced nature means that brands have to offer new content regularly, engage in rising topics and respond to thousands of messages. In the same way as a typical website chatbot, an Instagram chatbot helps reduce some of this workload.

Instagram chatbots are empowered with conversational intelligence that gives a brand the capability to focus on more high-value activities. It also helps to establish a brand in the follower’s minds. Memorable interactions and amusing messages can help the brand stay in the minds of followers for a long time once it has been established.

Next time a business thinks about Instagram, it must ensure to build a chatbot into the creative ideas that will offer a range of exciting avenues to explore.

Having more than 1.3 billion monthly and 1 billion daily users, WhatsApp has been operating at a massive scale for quite some time. And the onset of the pandemic itself has taken its game to a whole new extent. Messaging on WhatsApp has increased beyond 50% in the last few months. In fact, the usage of video and voice calling has doubled than what it was before. This certainly proves WhatsApp usage has increased exponentially.

When the first wave of pandemics hit humanity, the world went to lockdown, more people started using messaging apps for video calls and texting. This resulted in the consumer market shifting to WhatsApp, the first one being the most popular with 2 billion users worldwide. And the introduction of Whatsapp for businesses became a savior. The businesses were now able to spread the word about their services and products which they were unable to do earlier. 

But the integration of WhatsApp with Convert, a conversational AI can elevate the game of modern-day businesses to a higher extent. As it offers personalized engagement at scale, acquires new customers, and generates valuable customer insights which will further spike conversions for your business and that too at no extra cost. Keeping all these points in mind this blog will help you understand why WhatsApp for businesses matched with the services of Convert has the potential of transforming businesses in the long run along with improving consumer service as a whole.

Brief History of WhatsApp Marketing 

Though WhatsApp for business and advertising might feel like it has been around forever, its history tends to be, very brief and surprisingly recent. Two former Yahoo employees namely Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded WhatsApp in 2009, the app became insanely popular but remained free of business presence as its sole purpose was to connect people of every social stratum, and that too in a much simpler way.

Even after being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, its co-founders promised to keep WhatsApp ad-free. Over the years, WhatsApp released multiple new features to defend itself from competition like improved group features and a Snapchat-like 24-hour story update, while some others were designed to improve the integration of the app within the Facebook ecosystem.

In May 2018, Koum left WhatsApp due to a clash in the strategy with its parent company, Facebook, which has plans to move towards a business and ad-friendly model. And so, with the interest in WhatsApp marketing came the release of new business-friendly features like the free WhatsApp Business app for Android in selected markets and revenue-generating WhatsApp Business API and Ads in WhatsApp Status Stories.

Knowing all this, now you must be quite familiar with the way how WhatsApp for business was introduced and the reason for the same. But the next question that you must be wondering of knowing the answer to would be why you should be choosing WhatsApp for your business. And the same will be answered in the next section.

Why Choose WhatsApp for the Purpose of Business?

Messaging apps have become the #1 form of communication amongst consumers and brands. In most countries, phones and even SMS messaging have become secondary options next to these new means. This is because channel like WhatsApp is much more efficient and immediate than traditional methods of communication. Following are the reasons why you should choose WhatsApp as a medium of communication with your prospective customers:

It’s where most of your customers are:

Out of all the messaging apps currently in the market, Whatsapp is the most used one, followed by Facebook Messenger and WeChat.

Offers a guarantee of better engagement:

WhatsApp increases engagement because it transmits and strengthens credibility. It shows potential consumers that your business is not restricted to traditional bureaucratic channels of communication and that the customer experience is an important part of the said business.

Great reach and accessibility:

Whatsapp is one of the most used messaging apps worldwide, having more than 2 billion users around the globe. Now is the time for businesses to make themselves more available and accessible for their customers, to contact them in channels they usually use and feel comfortable with. One feature that holds much importance is that it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and with any device.

Quicker responses:

By using Whatsapp, you can answer more quickly by reusing useful and frequently sent messages for speeding up the support process. You can contact your target audience directly on their phones, anytime and anywhere.

What are WhatsApp Business APIs & their Advantages? 

WhatsApp Business API is basically an interface that allows businesses to interact with their customers in a secure, private environment while allowing a more friendly and informal way of communication. The main idea of the WhatsApp API is to take the WhatsApp API endpoint and integrate it into their business software. In this way, they can interact with the customers smoothly and securely.

Advantages of WhatsApp business API include:

• The multi-login feature lets you add your teammates to support customers and work from different devices at the same time.
• Offers you the capability of managing large volumes of incoming messages seamlessly.
• You can send quick responses and automatic replies to your customers.
• Official business account verification via a green checkmark develops credibility.
• It allows third-party software integration which is the most important feature considering the integration of Conversational AI like Convert which plays a crucial role in boosting your sales and offering 1:1 customer engagement at scale.

Note: WhatsApp Business is different from WhatsApp Business API. WhatsApp API is for medium and large-scale businesses whereas, WhatsApp Business is for small-scale businesses that need to communicate with their customers 1-on-1.

Integration Of WhatsApp with Convert: A leap towards transformation

Being close and personal along with developing brand credibility in your customers’ minds is the key to having the edge over your business competitor. With more and more people using digital media and social media platforms to connect, evaluate and make decisions, it is vitally important to look for effective methods to increase the reach of your business.

Developing a great product is the first challenge, but marketing it so that it is visible to its potential customers is the second and the biggest hurdle passing which later would convert into sales. With the world running on automated software and technologies, one can ace the business domain by implementing a personal, conversational AI like Convert to serve its customers.

Convert as a Conversational AI unified with WhatsApp brings huge advantages which are:

1. Improved revenue:
   Convert integrated with WhatsApp API lets you engage with your customers on the go using appropriate and customized messages. It also accelerates the process of product search and minimizes the time taken to purchase with its AI engine. Convert also offers the feature of up-selling and cross-selling to your customers which further improves the top-line drastically.
2. Enhances CX:
   Convert lets you break the boundaries of the traditional and formal manner of communication with your customers. It provides the option of communicating through images, videos, and gifs which builds the connection of the brand with its consumers. The feature of reminding your customers of important dates and activities via timely alerts shows them that you care.
3. Reduced CAC:
   By unleashing the huge potential of Convert unified with WhatsApp brands have an opportunity of decreasing their CAC. As much as 30% of reduction in costs can be achieved by implementing Convert in collaboration with WhatsApp API. Convert has the ability to analyze customer behavior and self-train itself to cater to multiple customers simultaneously, thereby saving your training time and cost immensely. The contact center cost is further reduced due to its ability to work round the clock without any human intervention.
4. Higher reach:
   There are more than 2 billion users of WhatsApp messenger globally which proves that it is the most preferred platform for textual conversations. Convert as a Conversational AI for WhatsApp enables you to connect with almost all of your customers round the clock ensuring a higher reach and boost in sales ultimately.
5. Customer satisfaction at its best:
   Convert allows your customers to connect with you regarding any issue instantly, by not making them fill out a form to respond or letting them wait for hours by using WhatsApp for business. Quick response and ease of access comprise a good customer experience and this is what drives a customer into giving positive feedback.

Looking upon all the features and advantages of Convert as a Conversational AI integrated with the services of WhatsApp API makes it one of the best in the market. Oriserve is very proud to launch these features in collaboration with Vodafone Idea, Rupify, and many other such businesses. The use cases that these businesses are driving with Convert integrated WhatsApp commerce are:

• Driving conversions through personalized conversations.
• Sending personalized product recommendations based on customers’ needs & past behavior.
• Driving orders through interactive messages and a seamless shopping experience overall.

Conclusion:

Summing all things up, it becomes quite evident that WhatsApp commerce is assured to become the biggest game-changer in the e-Commerce scene. Customers don’t have to jump through multiple apps and websites just to find what they’re looking for. WhatsApp will become the most vital channel when it comes to generating sales and unlocking hyper-exponential growth. Interested in knowing how Convert can take it to the next level?

Use instant, persistent and relevant conversations as a lever for Lead generation, here’s how!

Lead generation is the key motive of business and marketing activities, without which the base of business activities is lost. Different methods for lead generation have been used over the years however conversational AI remains top among those.

Conversational AI has been one of the most prominent techniques widely used for lead generation the reason it’s a comparatively low investment with high ROI. Businesses that use AI chatbots are more likely to generate high-quality leads. Unlike human beings, a conversational AI can assist 24/7.

When a potential client or a person visits the website of a business their first interaction occurs with the conversational AI. Hence not deploying a conversational AI on your website is an unnecessary risky business.

Why Is There a Need to Use Conversational AI While Doing Business?

Simply because communication is the key to attracting and sustaining existing customers. Communication is the guiding light and conversational AI does just that, it engages the audience and keeps them engrossed by simply having a conversation.

Qualifying leads:

Conversational AI qualifies leads without human intervention and directs them through the sales funnel. This makes the job of the sales department even easier.

Better ROI:

Conversational AI is synonymous with better ROI in every sense of the word. It helps in solving many business problems that existed traditionally. Leads generated ensure high quality.

Promising Customer Engagement:

Customer engagement is de facto for the success of any business out there. Customer engagement works wonders when done appropriately. Conversational AI not only provides 24/7 assistance but also helps to automate customer experience by adhering to their problems in real time. 

Here Are a Few Ways to Use Conversational AI for Lead Generation:

Traditionally, acquiring leads is 10 times more expensive than converting the leads that you already have. Using AI chatbots for lead generation can significantly reduce the cost and effort that goes behind attracting customers to the top of the funnel.

Understanding & Creating User Persona:

The first and foremost crucial factor for lead generation is understanding your customers.

The demographics can be related to geography, gender, age group, economic status, etc. once the business has the knowledge of this it can be used to optimize the Conversational AI in such a way that it automatically generates qualified leads as per the requirement of customers. 

It is always better to focus on a certain group of the target audience than an entire community.

Segregation & Personalization:

Conversational AI can be used to segregate potential customers as per their preferences this can further assist in drafting personalized messages for each customer. Surely one way to keep the customers intact. Personalization appeals to the customers and guarantees loyalty.

Simplified Identification:

It becomes convenient to identify and further collect the details of the visitors to your website using Conversational AI.

Automated Scheduling of Appointments:

If the leads stand qualified conversational AI schedules appointments automatically. This gives the company an upper edge over the competitors. By giving customers a zero-effort process of conversion. It reduces the efforts of the sales department and lets them focus on the customers in a better way.

Proven Relevance & Educating Audience:

It is true what they say, the best one is the relevant one. Using the given prospects’ conversational AI helps educate the audience when they are browsing through your website.

Seamless Agent Hand-offs:

In case there are complex queries that need human attention the AI can automatically direct them toward a competent person. In this way, the customer query is intelligently resolved and directed. Indeed, Conversational AI cannot replace humans however, it certainly increases their productivity. As the conversational AI provides a history of the previous conversation, it becomes easy for the employee to handle the task.

Offline Lead Generation:

Unlike human beings, conversational AI is never offline. Once installed it works forever. Hence it keeps generating leads even when its human counterpart is offline and that proves to be the biggest benefit. 

Reduction in Bounce Rate:

Using conversational AI is engaging. So even if customers are intending to bounce from your website, they feel the psychological need to interact with the Conversational AI bot. It understands customer requirements and gives you an advantage over competitors.

That’s what Convert does for you, the conversations act as a lever for lead generation and support your brand to seize the height of lead generation.

Convert provides an environment for your existing and potential customers to interact with the system directly and if the query isn’t resolved, it redirects the same, ultimately getting human attention. That does not only help to generate leads but also helps to work in a better way on the existing ones.

AI technology is the future of marketing and sales. Corporations are investing in conversational AI on a large scale each passing day. Convert is one of those tools that help your business grow and prosper in unimaginable ways. Are you ready to invest in the future? Then surely you must invest in Conversational AI.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic technology; it is already influencing our daily lives.

Since the dawn of computing, scientists have aimed to construct robots that can think, reason, and learn as well as humans – in other words, artificial intelligence.

IT [Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning] is making its way out of the lab and into the real world. It has an impact on our daily life. There’s no denying that we’ve arrived at the dawn of the artificial intelligence era.

AI is expected to have a long-term impact on almost every business. It is already present in our smart devices, autos, healthcare system, and favourite apps, and it will continue to pervade many additional industries in the foreseeable future.

Because AI is the cornerstone of computer learning, artificial intelligence is very crucial to our future. Computers can harness huge volumes of data and utilize their learned intelligence to make optimal decisions and discoveries in fractions of the time it takes people.

Artificial intelligence is being credited with everything from cancer research advances to cutting-edge climate change research.

The Future Is Now: AI’s Impact Is Everywhere

Modern AI — more specifically, “narrow AI,” which performs objective functions using data-trained models and often falls into the categories of deep learning or machine learning — has already impacted practically every major business. That has been especially true in recent years, as data gathering and analysis have increased dramatically because of improved IoT connections, the proliferation of linked devices, and faster computer processing.

Some industries are only getting started using AI, while others are seasoned veterans. Both have a lot of work ahead of them. Regardless, the impact of artificial intelligence on our daily lives is difficult to ignore:

1. Transportation: Autonomous automobiles will one day transport us from place to place, although perfecting them could take a decade or more.
2. Manufacturing: AI-enabled robots assist humans in a restricted range of jobs such as assembling and stacking, and predictive analysis sensors ensure that equipment runs smoothly.
3. Healthcare: Diseases are more quickly and reliably identified, medication discovery is sped up and streamlined, virtual nursing assistants monitor patients, and data analysis helps to provide a more personalized patient experience in the comparatively AI-nascent sector of healthcare.
4. Education: With the help of AI, textbooks are digitized, early-stage virtual tutors assist human teachers, and facial analysis assesses students’ emotions to help discern who is struggling or bored, and better adapt the experience to their unique requirements.
5. Journalism: Journalism is also utilizing AI and will continue to profit from it. Bloomberg employs Cyborg technology to assist in the interpretation of complex financial reports. The Associated Press uses Automated Insights’ natural language capabilities to publish 3,700 earnings report stories per year, approximately four times more than in the past.
6. Customer Service: Last but not least, Google is working on an AI assistant that could make human-like phone calls to arrange appointments at places like your local hair salon. The technology comprehends context and nuance in addition to words.

But these advancements are just the beginning; there’s a lot more to come — far more than even the most foresighted prognosticators can imagine.

With companies spending nearly $20 billion on AI products and services each year, giants like Google, Apple, Starbucks, and Amazon spending billions, to develop those products and services, and universities making AI a more prominent part of their respective curricula, and continue to deploy AI-related solutions that directly interact (often behind the scenes) with consumers daily.

In the examples below, we are trying to show how these large brands are using AI to innovate and gain a competitive advantage:

So how is Amazon the Ultimate Tipster?

Amazon began experimenting with ways that a digital bookshop may outperform a conventional bookstore in terms of customer experience in its early days. They started recommending products based on previous purchases, and previous viewings. This was an early version of AI that would eventually generate a personality profile for 300 million Amazon customers. As Amazon’s recommendations improved, people began to purchase elsewhere less and less.

One of the most intriguing aspects about Amazon is that it genuinely is a “one-stop-shop” for customers. Amazon is used by customers for every aspect of their shopping experience. Amazon also outperforms rival marketplaces and shops in activities like looking for new deals and discounts, comparing pricing, and checking availability.

Not only are Amazon’s in-site recommendations effective; its email notifications are even more so, with a conversion/sale ratio of nearly 60%.

Purchase history, browsing history, related items, commonly bought together data, and more are all used to provide item recommendations. Using its vast data set and artificial intelligence, Amazon has created and tested a wide range of recommendations. “You are what you buy on Amazon.” While Amazon continues to improve its user interface through traditional research and A/B testing, its unique content personalization is the outcome of great AI. Customer loyalty has strengthened over time as a result of data-driven customization and personalization.

And how is Starbucks using AI to delight longtime coffeeholic?

Hardcore coffee fanatics all have their favourite Starbucks drink, and they get bored of saying it over and over. When Starbucks decided to create its mobile app, the goal was to make ordering their favourite drink as simple as possible. This is made simple by the app, which allows people to save their drink order down to the slightest detail. An AI tale would not be complete without a loyalty/ordering smartphone app. Starbucks uses artificial intelligence to combine the saved beverages and purchase history with a variety of other criteria, like the home city, preferred ordering time, and even the weather at the time of one’s order.

Finally, one of the smartest things they’re doing is using GPS data from mobile users to figure out which sections of the country are in desperate need of a Starbucks store. The app has a store locator that calculates the distance from the nearest store. The corporation might prioritize new sites based on the number of searches received.

Starbucks and Amazon have shown that it’s more about recognizing untapped markets and potential than it is about recommending products and services. By putting AI to creative use, it is possible to figure out how to serve their customers better.

The onset of AI gave rise to the era of conversational sales assistants or in other words -chatbots! These talkative computers harness the power of two disciplines of AI: natural language processing and natural language production to engage with human users. They show up on social media feeds, customer service pages, and websites to provide conversation, advice, and companionship – and they’re changing how we deal with businesses like utilities, pizza delivery services, online stores, banks, healthcare providers and even governments.

Bajaj Bikes: A Classic Case Study

Bajaj Auto sought to go ahead of the competition with the launch of the new Pulsar 125 motorcycle by creating hype around the product and establishing itself as the leading brand in the 125 CC two-wheeler category. Ultimately, they wanted to engage more meaningfully with their target audience: ambitious and ensure that their questions were answered quickly. They anticipated that by doing so, they would be able to improve their lead conversion rate and, as a result, their sales conversion rate.

So What did Bajaj do?

Baja Auto and Ori, partnered in May 2021 to debut Google’s Business Messages on their website. Bajaj Auto serviced over 34,000 unique customers, engaged in over 300 hours of chatbot discussion in two months, and experienced a 1,335 percent boost in lead conversions by employing conversational commerce to aid product discovery and inquiry.

The use of chatbots, helped Bajaj Auto enable search intent as the overarching measure of brand popularity when compared to their competition. Even when the country was thrust into COVID-19 lockdown, Bajaj Auto’s keywords outperformed their competition by 80%.

Cognitive bots ease customer-platform communication in a myriad of ways:

• Improves Personalization For User Interaction
• Provides context-rich Multilingual Support
• Automate Customer Support for Queries across basic to complex queries
• Accelerates sales from Abandoned Carts
• Easy Order Management
• Accelerate Sales through effective customer value management
• Accelerates Customer Acquisition by guiding the user to the quickest path to closure

AI is a technology that is revolutionizing every aspect of existence. It’s a versatile tool that allows people to rethink how they integrate data, analyze it, and apply the ensuing insights to make better decisions.

While today’s AI systems are still a long way from achieving that aim, they are beginning to perform on par with, if not better than, their creators in certain activities. AI has advanced dramatically because of new techniques that allow robots to learn from vast amounts of data.

AI is the biggest business opportunity of the next decade. Manual and repetitive jobs are already automated. It will soon assist humans in making decisions. Along the way, it will contribute more to global GDP by 2030 than China and India combined. These developments in AI today, will further give rise to various innovative use cases and possibilities across AR, VR and Metaverse.

How will AI affect virtual reality and the metaverse in the future?

Smartphones will become smarter as a result of VR technology, and many more smart tools, such as VR goggles and VR devices, will flood the market. We may appreciate history (which is presumably boring), explore space (from Earth), see the surface of the moon in 3D, and much more via virtual reality.